Lents town center awaits its reclaiming

TRIB TOWN: PDC projects, light rail will transform area

By Anna Johns

The Portland Tribune, Feb 6, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (5 Reader comments)

JIM CLARK / PORTLAND TRIBUNE

Workers have started on a two-story office complex near Southeast 91st Avenue and Foster Road that will be called Lents Town Center 1. The top floor will be filled by Assurety Northwest, an insurance and financial company now based in Gresham. The bottom floor will be retail.

The Lents town center in Southeast Portland may seem like a blur to drivers who exit off Interstate 205 and speed through it each day.

At the intersection of Southeast Foster Road and 92nd Avenue, most of the buildings are either boarded up or dilapidated. The only obvious sign of life is at a gas station – reminiscent of a racetrack pit stop where cars pull out of traffic for a quick fill-up and then head down Foster toward downtown Portland.

“People drive through not even realizing it’s a town center,” said Jess Laventall, a Lents resident. “It has no identity. It has nothing attractive.”

But all that is changing, in large part because of TriMet’s I-205 light-rail line project, which includes a station stop near the intersection.

The nearly abandoned town center is now the focus of an urban renewal effort led by the Portland Development Commission, which has been steadily pouring money into the Lents neighborhood since the City Council designated it an Urban Renewal Area in 1998.

The neighborhood is earmarked for $75 million over 15 years. Of that, about $46 million remains to be spent – and the projects finally are falling into place.

Up until now, most of the urban renewal dollars have been spent on infrastructure projects such as street repairs, sidewalks, parking spaces, lighting and improvements to the neighborhood’s seven parks.

Twenty-five percent of the money has gone toward affordable housing projects and homeownership assistance programs.

All the effort has attracted people like Laventall’s family of four to the Lents neighborhood, in anticipation of a vibrant future for the old community. The median price of a new home in Lents is $150,000, which is significantly lower than the city average of $225,000.

“I’m an investor,” Laventall said. “I want to see urban renewal be successful.”

But businesses have shied away from Lents until now. Assurety Northwest, an insurance and financial company based in Gresham, is relocating its headquarters to Lents.

The company broke ground on its 30,000-square-foot mixed-use building last month. Assurety will bring 45 jobs to the area and will open up other office and retail rental space in its new building at Southeast 91st Avenue and Foster.

Ararat Bakery, currently located on Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, just signed a 10-year lease to move into a space near the town center. And the PDC is in early negotiations with several property owners, including the owner of the New Copper Penny bar, to redevelop their sites.

“It took a while to get started,” said Amy Miller-Dowell, PDC project manager. “All these things happening at once has Lents poised for change.”

Here comes the green line

One reason the momentum is building is the coming light-rail line. When the green line is finished in 2009, there will be four MAX stops within the Lents neighborhood.

With help from $5 million in urban renewal dollars, TriMet will build a station that descends into the Lents town center, complete with landscaping and public art. By 2025, TriMet estimates 2,200 people will pass through that station each day.

Miller-Dowell said PDC’s focus for the next 18 to 24 months is to bring attractive businesses into the town center by the time the green line opens. The PDC will be looking for entrepreneurs who want to open coffee shops, restaurants and retail businesses that will turn a deserted town center into the true heart of Lents.

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